"Yeah. M-O-R-I is how he spells his name, if you search that it'll come up - uh, the blog's called Eventualities if you want to search that, though I can just send you these links once I'm literate for you to catch up with tomorrow."

(Argh! No! Goddamnit! Now he has no excuse, and he—)

Oh fuck him sideways with a barbecue poker.

He pushes his salad aside so that he can dramatically clonk his forehead against the table.

"- Jaeha, are you okay?"

"No. I've never been okay and I'm not about to start. But in perhaps less insoluble matters, I've already run into your blog, or rather I Googled it after you mentioned it in passing, and I read quite a lot of it, and it was really interesting, and I was spitefully not mentioning it like a petulant child, and then my brain helpfully supplied me with the parallel of the time seven years ago when I stalked Tae-gun before having met him and I didn't tell him until later and I really don't change, do I, of course I can't trust myself backlashed when myself perfectly sane is in fact in fucking sane."

"Oh. I... don't think it's stalking to read my public blog but thanks for eventually telling me you did?"

"I don't think it's stalking either it's just the same goddamn—tendencies—I'm just always the same."

"This time you - caught yourself before it went much of anywhere, that's something."

"Doesn't fucking help, does it. —sorry. I don't want to lift my head now because I'm too embarrassed to look at you but the conversation was going well and was interesting and stuff."

"Uh - okay -" There's a little vocal quaver like possibly his backlash isn't thrilled about this but the word he pronounces is 'okay' and not 'aiee'. "I thought so too, if I didn't think the stuff on my blog was cool I wouldn't blog about it."

You're making a fool of yourself againnnnnnn you dumbassssssssss—

"I read your series about basic research. ...some of it. There was a lot. I spent an unreasonable amount of time reading it, actually. You're really—passionate, and it shows."

"It's frustrating when there's all this information lying around and people are like... meh. It's like Aristotle being of the belief that men and women have different numbers of teeth. He was married."

"Perhaps his wife was missing some, or he was, depending on the direction he was wrong in. Doesn't explain why he'd be making generalisations about every woman but... people do that."

"He evidently didn't even ask her how many teeth she'd lost. And then he had the effrontery to write it down like he knew, which takes it from exasperating to offensive!"

"Offensive, really?" That's a really cute way to—

JAILER. JAILER, KANG JAEHA. JAILER.

"It offends me! I'm not sure how else to describe it!"

"I suppose that's as good a descriptor as any." ...and, okay, he'll stop being such a drama queen and lift his head up again to resume eating. "Have there been substantial changes or improvements on that front—basic research, that is—since you started writing about them?"

There have been, and Haru is happy to chat about them over pie!

hhhhhhhhhhh

His JAILER needs to be more evil. This, Jaeha believes. How else is he going to justify his petty and childish instincts, if Traceless keeps not being evil even while he is lording his power over Jaeha?

And then it is time for the checklist and bedtime.

Time for him to be medically knocked unconscious and for his body to get used for others' purposes, you mean? Right. That time.

He misses the feeling of guiding.

In the morning breakfast is scrambled eggs. Haru takes them with ketchup.

How does this man survive on this diet.

"So what's the plan for the day?" he asks, trying to sound like a human being.

"I have a thing at U. Toronto - there's some kind of tiny special seminar on dungeon biology and they want me to come talk about zoo monsters, I'm going to transcribe the whole thing in case any of it should be a blog post but I don't know yet what they're going to ask me - and then I'm going to go see the new Star Trek movie with Cricket, he has a positive opinion of the screenwriter and the director so it might be great. I haven't been assigned a dungeon for the evening yet but I'll probably get one."